The Enduring Fad

If you ask me, I’m just about never wrong. Sure, I might have missed a few questions on exams and things, but, as far as I’m concerned, I’m the conversational equivalent of a no-hitter: there might have been a walk or an error somewhere, but I’m nearly perfect.

So it pains me to say this, but today, on Monday, the 26th day of July, 2010, I realized I was wrong. Dead wrong. Twitter is not a passing fad; Twitter is not totally useless. In fact—I can’t believe I’m saying this—but Twitter can even serve some sort of purpose.

From just about the first time I heard about Twitter, I bashed it. Perhaps I should have known better when even the mainstream media, hesitant to accept blogs, universally embraced it. Maybe, I should have realized I was wrong when Medill professors consistently referenced it and many classmates I respect had their own Twitter account. But I definitely should have known I was wrong when I started quoting Kid Rock to justify myself.


Photo Courtesy of Jim Greenhill

"It's gay. If one more person asks me if I have a Twitter, I'm going to tell them, 'Twitter this [bleep], mother[bleep]er,' I don't have anything to say, and what I have to say is not that relevant. Anything that is relevant, I'm going to bottle it up and then squeeze it onto a record somewhere."

Slowly, I did begin to check Twitter. I never went so far as to have an account, but several times a week I would read other people’s tweets. I checked tweets from Kenny Powers, of Eastbound and Down fame, and of Coach_D_Antoni, the unauthentic alter-ego (provided by comedian Joe Praino) of the Knicks head coach that’s since been suspended. And there were hoards of reporters and athletes whose tweets would be quoted in news stories, and comedians whose Tweets were quoted in blogs I read. Still, I resisted.

During the World Cup, Twitter reported that at the height of the action—when some goals were scored—as many as 3,051 tweets were submitted per second. Unbelievable. Still, I was undeterred. Sure 3,051 people had something to say, I reasoned, but who cared enough to read what they had to say?

That's when I realized the truth: it doesn't matter. I had been completely unaware of something so painfully obvious. Twitter is, at its core, a blog. It's only different in that it limits the length of posts, and therefore the expectation that comments must be well thought out. It is successful because it encourages returning users by banking on frequent short posts beating out the infrequent long posting model that blogs, like Blogger, had locked down.

So the Twitter of tomorrow is a lot like the blogs of today. Many users will have accounts, but few will be worth following. And most of those worth following will belong to journalists, reporters and columnists we respect sharing quick scoops, commentary and links; celebrities and company spokespeople who want to engage their fans; and the occasional dark horse who is witty enough to keep users coming back for more.

And you know what? That future doesn't sound so bleak. In fact, sign me up. I hereby declare myself a Twitter follower. Maybe one day I'll even have something relevant to say in 140 characters or less. But for now, I'm old school. I'm just going to bottle it up and squeeze it into a blog somewhere. Twitter this [expletive], mother[expletive].

An Open Letter to the MTA

Dear MTA,

For 9 years we’ve had a great relationship. Growing up, the rides on your orange-and-yellow interior into the Manhattan were often more memorable than the trip itself. When I was 12 you helped me attain status: I was one of the cool kids at the Solomon Schechter Jewish day school who shunned the yellow bus for an afterschool slice and a ride home on the Q46. One year later I descended the stairs to your vast underground bowels for the first time without parents—it was more of a coming-of-age moment for me than my Bar Mitzvah that fall. In high school I did more homework riding your trains and busses than I ever did in my room (being the social climber I was, the lack of reception in your tunnels was a blessing). In college, I moved to Chicago but you were never far from my heart. While riding Chicago’s dreaded “el” I constantly spoke of your virtues compared to your Second City counterpart. You are the high school sweetheart I never had, the lover who never stopped giving, traveling at the fastest possible speeds so I could get to my preferred destination for $1.75 $2.00 $2.25. It’s been quite a love affair.

I’m afraid it’s coming to an end. You might think we've reached the twilight of our relationship because of the budget cuts, but really it has nothing to do with them. I promise.

It doesn’t bother me that you sent two of your underground tentacles, the V and the W, out to pasture. The part of the V line I took was replaced by the M, and the W was a redundant line anyway.

It’s unfortunate that you had to cut buses, too. It further shows your unfortunate tendencies to overlook non-Manhattan residents, and, especially the elderly most likely to ride those buses. But I can’t hate you for that. In an economy like this one, cuts are inevitable, and someone’s bound to be hurt.

There’s no love lost for announcing higher fares—again—while simultaneously cutting services. I understand that it’s unrealistic to expect to fork over just $2.00 for an unbelievably expansive transit network.

There’s been some recent unrest over your compensation benefits. Some people don’t like the vacation days your employees get, but I applaud you for your compensation packages. Working for you is a difficult job—you would have to pay a lot to get the investigative journalists that launched the “vacation days investigation” to join your ranks—and it’s one of the few well-paying jobs that lower income New Yorkers have a realistic shot at.

I’ll be honest, though, it does bother me a little bit that in the face of all these financial difficulties you’ve invested in a whole host of new train and bus models. I’d rather that money be spent elsewhere, but in an age of environmental radicalism, these efficient buses and trains were probably inevitable. Also, the heat down there, with temperatures reaching triple-digits above your tunnels, borders on unbearable.

Nevertheless, I’d still love you. Really, I would. I would choose to reminisce about my happier times with you, take the good and the bad—as any long love affair requires—if it weren’t for one thing. If only I never had to hear this again:

AP Image

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we apologize for the delay. There’s train traffic ahead of us, we’ll be moving shortly.”

I heard that message exactly 19 times last Thursday on my way to, and from, work. And yes, the recorded voice announcement is extremely irritating, but you know what’s really, so frustrating about the message? THAT THERE’S TRAIN TRAFFIC IN THE MIDST OF MASSIVE SERVICE CUTS. Simple logic says that if there are fewer cars on the road there will be less traffic, and so if there are fewer trains but more traffic, something is not adding up.

MTA, I’ve already found it within my heart to forgive you for enough transgressions to turn most of a city against you. Really, I’m trying to be patient, here. But if you’re going to take trains out of service, run them less frequently, raise fares and invest in efficient trains (which, by the way, are the trains plagued with the irritable recorded voice), it shouldn’t take me an hour and a quarter to travel what used to take just 45 minutes. My train shouldn’t stop repeatedly in the tunnel, and then halt, with opened doors releasing the train’s much needed cool air, at stations for an extra four-to-five minutes, and it sure as hell shouldn’t crawl along what’s advertised as an express line.

Oh, and my fellow F riders and I got the point the first 18 times. Take it easy already with that recorded message, will you?

Sincerely,
Adam Fusfeld

On Ownership and "Psychotic Ex-Girlfriends"

Ownership is a funny thing.

At the most basic level we own things because we want to do whatever we please with them. Kids can play with toys in nursery school, but they have to take turns using them. So they beg their parents for ownership rights. TVs can be viewed at bars and restaurants and every office place and library in America has a computer, but we want to be able to switch channels during commercials and watch that "Not Suitable for Work" YouTube video. The same principle applies for property, and just about any non-perishable, non-investment, ownership opportunity.

Except when it comes to sports. Rich men around the world pay millions of dollars so that they can call a professional sports franchise their own. They presumably crave the perks: the opportunity to befriend athletes, the celebrity status, and the show-off factor. But they're expected to leave the operation of that very franchise to other people--people who's paychecks they sign!--and treat their ownership as an investment. When people don't come to the ballpark, it's widely expected that the owner will invest less into the team. That's business as usual. (And, as we've all learned from the most recent LeBron episode, sports is a business.)

In David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game, widely considered the best basketball book ever written--and a must-read for any Basketball Junkie--there's a great section where the owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, Larry Weinberg, vetoes a pending trade that would send disgruntled forward Maurice Lucas to the Bulls. The team's general manager, Stu Inman, was desperate to trade the player as contract issues were affecting his performance, and "was furious" at the "lack of professionalism" Weinberg displayed by rejecting the deal. Inman screams at him: "Are you really telling me that you are rejecting what I recommend and all your coaches recommend, and that you know more than us?" And Halberstam is quick to point out that though Weinberg was a shrewd business man "he hadn't spent the previous season in a hundred small motels in a hundred tiny towns watching a hundred college games."

Of course, basketball lifers' (including Inman) disdain for the game's relentless shift towards business and away from the spirit of sport is a central theme of the story. They don't like that basketball is a business, yet feel threatened when their owner isn't simply concerned with the return on his investment and wants a say in team operations. It's really a double-edged sword. The sports media and sports fans hate to be reminded that sports are a business, yet disapprove when the owners of their favorite franchise acts unprofessionally.



I bring this up in light of the two big sports ownership stories to hit in the last week: Dan Gilbert's letter to LeBron James, and George Steinbrenner's death. (Steinbrenner has been sanctified in the media postmortem, but before his age robbed him of his bombastic public image, he was widely despised). Rip the letter all you want, and disapprove of Steinbrenner's treatment of some stars, most notably Dave Winfield, but keep in mind these are the guys that own the team.

Gilbert's letter, if viewed as a statement from the owner of a business valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, was entirely unprofessional. His PR advisers surely would have urged him to release a statement ensuring his customers--I mean, fans--that business will continue as usual despite the major loss, and the corporation will do whatever possible to recoup as much of its losses as possible. Similarly, Steinbrenner would be lambasted in business for his inability to keep his anger to himself. Putting public pressure on employees is not a good "business practice." A good businessman would have displayed patience with Billy Martin, dealt with Dave Winfield in private, and not gone back on his promise of patience with Yogi Berra at the managerial helm.

But who wants to view sports as a business? What ultimately made Steinbrenner so well-loved was that for all his faults, no fan questioned his love for the team. He was the Yankees' owner, sure, but also the franchise's biggest fan. We can pull a Frank Costanza and lambast him for trading Jay Buhner, but we must keep in mind that he didn't make the trade to decrease the payroll and increase his income; he did it so that his team would win. And win now. Everything he did was a by product of perhaps his most famous mantra: "I hate to lose. Hate, hate, hate to lose."

The same goes for Gilbert's letter. Released less than an hour after "The Decision" aired, many noted that the letter reads like one written by a "psychotic ex-girlfriend." I love that description. Gilbert loved his team so much that he acted with his heart, and not the head that has earned him millions during a successful business career. He loves his team, loves his fans, and was hurt by his favorite player's decision. And in his response he talked about winning championships, not about losing season ticket-holders.

As fans, we like to speak about our favorite teams in the first person. "How did we do today?" "Do you think our coach made the right call?" How could the refs screw us like that!?" We have a sense of ownership over our team, so it's easy to forget that somewhere in the stadium there's a man that laid down staggering amounts of money to actually own the team. When he's able to put his financial investment aside, and have an emotional attachment to his team, we shouldn't help but love it. This style of ownership is likely the last remaining vestige of a time when sports were about the love of the game and not the dollars that come along with it. For better or for worse.